The Bollywood star Rhea Chakraborty stepped out of the Byculla women’s prison in Mumbai, released on bail after 28 days in jail.

Over the previous four months, she had been vilified in a media spectacle that became a national obsession in India. She was accused of playing a role in the death of her boyfriend, fellow Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput, 34, who killed himself in his apartment in Mumbai on 14 June.

After news of his death broke, Rajput’s struggles with mental health began to emerge. But in the days that followed, conspiracy theories also began to take hold that Rajput had been driven to his death by the nepotism in India’s film industry, which had hated him for being an outsider and not from pure Bollywood lineage.

Claims that he had been murdered spread on social media and a “Justice for Sushant” campaign took hold, seized on by politicians from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).

The glare of the media then turned to Chakraborty. Rajput’s family filed a lawsuit against her, claiming she had abetted his death, and though no evidence could be presented, a campaign of hate began to build against her. In September she was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), accused of supplying drugs to Rajput, trafficking, and being part of an “active drug syndicate”.

She was not alone. After her arrest, the NCB also questioned some of Bollywood’s biggest names for alleged drug-related activity.

But Chakraborty denies any wrongdoing, both in relation to the death of her boyfriend and the NCB’s charges, and last week the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (Aiims) released an autopsy report confirming what the police had said all along: that Rajput had died by suicide. Any suspicion of murder could be ruled out.